So, everyone familiar with the Tribune will notice that we are now printing in colour. Doesn’t it look lovely? Notice the colour artwork people, appreciate it, maybe even sniff it a little bit, all that colour is made of blood, tears and cussing.

It started last year, during one of the editorial meetings at our local. We were plotting out our next step towards world domination and decided that a slightly more professional layout was required. Our old ebay printer was dying a slow and agonising death in the back room, so we decided to send it off to the great ebay in the sky and move up to a sparkly new colour printer. All fine and dandy when you’re four pints in on a Monday night, but not so easy in the cold harsh light of a Tuesday morning when we realised that no bastard was going to hand over ten grand for our vanity project and we’d have to find a way to pay for the fucking thing.

We tried all our usual means of financing new projects – buying tatts tickets, searching Facebook for hitherto forgotten rich relatives groaning on their death beds, sending Justin to the docks to do favours for sailors – and we had our usual degree of success.

Eventually we came up with Plan B: sell our only remaining asset, the car, and buy an older (but reliable) car and a new printer with the proceeds. Added to that would be our savings (hahahahaaaa) and our tax returns (with all the attached middle-class-welfare vote buying cash from Big Kev). We crunched a few spreadsheets and did ungainly victory dances in the lounge room, envisioning the buckets full of cash we’d soon have to fund the Tribune’s expansion into the soon-to-be-pwned media market.

We made lots of sensible decisions about finding an old reliable holden or similar and set off trekking through the used car yards of the inner suburbs.

Holden? A good practical Subaru? Even an old dime-a-dozen Ford? No, no. Not us. The first car yard we came to we found a 1980 Mercedes 280TE Estate with 450,000 kms on the clock.

“Look” said the salesman, “shiny-shiny.” “Oooo” we said, “init loooovely?”

“Yeeesssss” said the salesman, “totally meaningless status symbol for very superficial stupid people!!” “Ooooo” we said, “shiny-shiny”

“Even better” said the salesman, “for great bargain of $1000 we can also sell you a warranty for all the parts that won’t ever break.”

“Gosh” we said, “shiny-shiny AND reliable.”

Salesman nodded wisely. “For such discerning buyers, we will give it to you at sticker price if you sign RIGHT NOW.”

“Oooo, yes” we said, “quick before someone takes the shiny-shiny away from us. Pen!! Quickly!!”

And off we drove in our 30 year old car that had already done nearly half a million kilometres, congratulating ourselves on our clever purchase and fondling the slightly smaller-than-we-had-planned-on cheque.

The next day we took our new purchase proudly down to show our mechanic. After 10 minutes of assuring him that this was NOT a practical joke we were playing on him to make him cry, he told us to go away while he poked around in its innards.

Off we went to search ebay for sparkly new printer. “Look” we said, “the gods are looking after us, there’s a sparkly printer for a tiny price. The very things for us. Huzzah” and clicked the Buy-It-Now button. Within minutes, we got a phone call from blocked number promising delivery of sparkly printer under cover of darkness and in exchange for cash only.

More ungainly victory dances.

Next phone call was from our mechanic, requesting our presence in portentous tones.

When we arrived at the mechanic’s workshop, he and all his apprentices were gathered around the shiny-shiny, shaking their heads dolefully.

“What?” we asked, “look, shiny-shiny!!”

“No” said our mechanic, “dangerous and unroadworthy.” Then he spent half an hour pointing to broken brake pads, drive shafts, transmission leaks, headlights, windscreen wipers, boots, brushes, steering columns and indicator lights.

Much enraged, we sped (carefully) off to the car dealer to complain. The car dealer was astonished and horrified to learn that the roadworthy he had given us was not quite right. “I’m shocked” he said, “I’m a very trustworthy used car salesman, and I just cannot understand how this could happen. Fear not though, I am entirely honest, I will take your shiny-shiny and have all these trifling matters fixed in a jiffy”.

Off to the depths of his workshop went the shiny-shiny, and off home in a taxi went the beloved and I, still a little disgruntled, but mostly reassured by the honesty and trustworthiness of our nice used car salesman.

Three weeks later the shiny-shiny came back. “Splendid” we said, “They must have fixed everything if it took that long.”

Into the shiny-shiny we jumped, and set off for a triumphant drive through the countryside. We made it to the end of the street before the engine coughed into silence and stubbornly refused to start again.

So we got out and pushed the shiny-shiny back home. Several enraged calls to the trustworthy used car dealer later, two of his boys screamed up in a little datsun and jumped out smirking. They poked about under the engine for a bit, then told us that the problem was the distributor, which is not covered by a roadworthy or our warranty and was therefore not their problem. Then they jumped back into their little datsun and screamed off, roaring with laughter.

So we had the shiny-shiny towed to the mechanic, who told us mournfully that it was not the distributor so much as it was the entire electrical system, and that this a) was not a roadworthy item, b) was not covered by our warranty for the parts that won’t break and c) would cost about $2,000 dollars to fix. He also confirmed, a bit tearful by this stage, that the trustworthy used car salesman was entirely correct in saying that the contract we signed specified that the car is over 10 years old and he therefore did not have to fix it or return our money.

Meanwhile, the sparkly printer had churned out 10 copies of the latest Tribune and stopped dead. “More Toner” said the error message. So we bought $500 worth of toner from ebay.

The sparkly printer churned out another 10 copies of the latest Tribune and stopped dead. “More Imaging Units” said the error message. So we bought $900 worth of imaging units.

“Sod off” said the error message, “They’re the wrong imaging units.” So we checked the part number again and bought $2,000 worth of the right imaging units.

The sparkly printer churned out another 10 copies of the latest Tribune and stopped dead. “Call A Technician” said the error message.

2 weeks later a technician arrived and looked mournfully at the printer. He poked around inside it for a minute and told us that the printer needed a new part that would cost no more than $4,000. Then he presented us with a bill for $200 for his time and departed.

Meanwhile, the shiny-shiny had been fixed and returned to us. The first time we drove it the passenger side window stopped working. “Hmm, I said to beloved, “Perhaps a fuse has blown.” “Hmm,” he said to me, “perhaps it’s something else.” Then he tried to pull the window up with a pair of pliers and shattered it.

After 8 hours of swearing at the car while he dismantled the door and installed the new window ($80 from a wrecker in Reservoir), beloved stalked into the house and announced “I’ve worked out what’s wrong with that car, it’s made entirely of c**t.” I went out, spent 3 minutes installing a new fuse (15c from the BP down the road), came back inside and agreed wholeheartedly with his diagnosis.

At the next editorial meeting, we decided that the fact that we have a) completely run out of money, b) no printer and c) a car made entirely of c**t, was no reason at all to sell the car (give me a sign o lord…..hydraulic suspension pipe splits and sprays oil all over the engine and the driveway…give me another sign o lord…) or give up on our beloved Tribune.

“Debt!!” we said, “all the cool kids are doing it” and after pleading with the bank for a while, we borrowed some money from anxious family members, purchased a new new printer and well, here you are, reading the most roflsome new Tribune.

You know all those stories about magnates (think Onassis or Bond) who carry on in the face of adversity, overcome several bouts of bankruptcy and go on to take over the world? Well, that’s either going to be us, or we are going to sink like a stone and end up as nothing more than a cautionary tale to the rest of you.

Stay tuned.

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